


we’re gonna make it (though we don’t know how)

by walkthegale



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/F, Femslash, Fishing, Light Angst, Revolution, Smut, Swimming, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 18:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkthegale/pseuds/walkthegale
Summary: The last time Beau saw Yasha, she kissed her.





	we’re gonna make it (though we don’t know how)

Beau didn’t want this.

She’s so tired, and her newly-healed ribs ache, and she didn’t want any of this, not ever.

They don’t have a cart any more, so travel is slower than it was. Fjord is still limping, but he brushes off Jester’s suggestion of a healing spell.

“It’ll mend,” he tells her, though he leans on her a little when she offers her shoulder.

“Yeah, we should keep moving,” Nott pipes up. Walking a little way behind them, Beau sees her tug gently on Caleb’s robe, as though to chivvy him along, and Caleb almost stumbles, catches himself just in time. Beau is surprised he can see where he’s going at all through the mess of blood and dirt streaking his face.

Next to her, Mollymauk fidgets with something in his pocket. He starts to whistle a tune, but subsides without so much as a comment when Beau glares at him.

They keep walking. No one says much else for a while, and no one looks back.

***

By nightfall, they are far enough from Zadash that it’s not even a smudge on the horizon, though Beau thinks she can still smell smoke on the wind if she tries.

They make a haphazard camp in the lee of a hill. It’s not quite as hidden from the road as they would like, but it’s the best they can find, and not a one of them has the energy to walk any further without a rest.

Beau falls asleep quickly, but her dreams are bad enough that, disorientated, she punches Molly in the shoulder when he wakes her for her watch. To his credit, he doesn’t hit her back, though she knows it must have hurt.

She shoves her goggles on and sits with her knees pulled up to her chest, gazing into the darkness outside their little ring of light. The night is just as quiet as a thousand other country nights, far from people and fighting and unexpected fucking revolutions.

When her time is up, Beau nudges Caleb with her foot on her way back to her bedroll. Nott’s wide eyes, gleaming in the firelight, tell her that he won’t be watching alone. She’s glad of that for him.

She sleeps again, deep and dreamless this time, and when she wakes, it’s morning and she feels a bit better for it. She thinks everyone does - spells and spirits recharged by time and sleep - and there’s a bit more talk over breakfast than there was over dinner the previous night.

Jester is the one who finally addresses the question that’s hanging over them. “You guys? Where are we going?” Her voice is quieter than Beau is used to. “I mean, we should probably have, like, a plan or something. Or a direction, or something.”

“The road’s a direction,” Molly says, eventually, when it’s clear no one else has shit to say. “Away is a direction.”

“Yeah,” Beau adds, eagerly. “Yeah, we’ll follow the road, and there’ll be, like, a town or something…”

“And then what?” Caleb asks, sullen.

“You got a better idea?” Beau shoots back at him, though there’s no fire in it. They none of them know what to do now, not really, and she doesn’t want to think about that too hard. They’ll follow the road, and there’ll be a town, smaller and less important than Zadash, and the town will have an inn, and maybe she can get some booze, and make some gold fighting spiders or some shit. She never wanted any of this politics bullcrap anyway.

They end up back on the road, because no one does have a better idea.

***

They walk for more than half the day, passing no one, and Beau begins to think that she might just go crazy if this level of quiet keeps up. She tries to meditate while she walks, but it’s never really been her strong point. She can still smell smoke, but maybe it’s just the smell of them now. The Mighty Nein, who smell of smoke and dirt and blood, and trail destruction in their wake.

Just when she’s thinking she’d probably welcome one of Molly’s ridiculous songs, Nott yells from up ahead that she can see something coming further down the road. They form up instinctively, closing the gaps between them as a lone figure approaches, driving a cart with two horses.

It’s Molly who realises first.

“It’s ok,” he says, a broad grin spreading across his face. “It’s ok. It’s Yasha.”

***

The last time Beau saw Yasha, she kissed her.

They had all had a bit too much to drink and, outside Yasha’s bedroom door, Beau had taken her courage with both hands, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed Yasha on the mouth.

And Yasha had kissed her back, hot and enthusiastic, with her hand on the back of Beau’s head, tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck. And they might have carried on, but Molly came singing up the stairs behind them, with Fjord and Jester trailing in his wake, and the moment was lost.

“Goodnight, Beau,” Yasha had said, ducking into her room.

And Beau had told her goodnight, and gone to her own bed, equal parts gleeful and frustrated. And in the morning, Yasha was gone, and they had none of them seen her since.

All hell had broken loose since then, but they hadn’t seen Yasha.

But she’s here now, and Beau hangs back while everyone mobs around her. Molly plants a smacking kiss on her forehead and calls her a marvellous arsehole. Beau feels like she agrees with part of that statement, at least.

Yasha looks up and meets her eyes, over the heads of their friends, and Beau looks away, scuffs her feet in the dirt.

Yasha has fresh food with her, and some other supplies, and there’s no argument when they decide to make camp right there and then, despite the hours of daylight still ahead. Jester hops up into the cart right away, with a smile on her face that Beau hasn’t seen in a while. They leave the road and tuck themselves under a rocky outcrop on the edge of the woods.

There’s a lot of storytelling, filling Yasha in on what they’ve been up to since she saw them last. On what happened in Zadash. On the good, and the bad, and the stuff that Beau would rather forget. She knows she’s not the only one, watches as different people wince or look away as different things get said.

“I heard word of you,” Yasha says, after a while.

“How do you mean?” Fjord asks her.

She tells them that their name is being spoken, their story being told, in more than one town nearby, including the one they’re heading towards. People are passing it around, in whispers mostly, but sometimes more than that. Almost as a rallying cry.

“What sort of a welcome would we get there?” Caleb’s voice is just slightly unsteady.

Yasha considers for a moment. “Not a good one from the Crownsguard, but I don’t think they’d arrest you on sight. Not yet.”

“Scheisse,” Caleb says, burying his hands in Frumpkin’s fur.

***

“I’m glad Yasha’s back,” Jester tells Beau. They’re both petting one of the horses, a little way away from the others. “It always feels nicer when she’s here, you know?”

“I guess.”

Jester tips her head on one side. “You don’t sound really glad.” She pets the horse’s nose, and smiles when it nuzzles her hand.

“Urgh.” Beau wishes, just for the moment, that Jester would be a bit less open with her insights. “I’m not _not_ glad. I just… where was she? I know she has important shit to do. I know. But…”

“But you’re angry that she wasn’t with us when we needed her?”

“No! Well… yeah.”

Jester leans against Beau, puts her head on her shoulder. “You know, I think she is here when she can be.”

Beau sighs. “I know.” And perhaps she does know, but it doesn’t help.

She links arms with Jester, and they wander back over to the main campsite.

“I’m going fishing,” Beau overhears Yasha telling Molly and Fjord a little later. “Catch us some dinner. There’s a stream over that way.” She gestures towards the woods.

Beau doesn’t know why, and if she’d stopped to think about it, she probably wouldn’t, but she jumps to her feet. “I’ll go with you. Could do with stretching my legs.”

Her excuse is so clearly nonsense, when they’ve been walking all this time, but Yasha just shrugs and nods, and they set off into the woods together.

***

Watching the fresh, clear water, Beau suddenly feels too grimy to bear. Days of road dust on top of battle sweat, and there’s still a smear of long-dried blood on her leg and she doesn’t even know if it’s her own.

“Can you swim?” she asks Yasha, suddenly.

Yasha looks at her like she’s grown an extra head. “Of course.”

Beau can’t help but grin, a little of the tight, tense feeling in her belly melting away. “Ok, ok. Want to swim?”

“I’m fishing,” Yasha tells her, frowning.

“Suit yourself.” Beau hops up and begins to strip off her clothes, noticing for the first time quite how filthy they are. She also notices that a faint pink tinge stains Yasha’s cheeks, and that she’s looking everywhere but at Beau. Beau gets down to her underwear and stretches, languorously and deliberately in the warm afternoon air, and she can almost physically feel Yasha’s eyes drawn to her.

She turns away, but chickens out before she gets entirely naked, alone there in the woods with Yasha’s gaze boring into her back. Instead she takes a step forward and jumps, cannonballing into the water below.

The day is warm, but the stream that has wound its way down from the mountains is not, and Beau surfaces gasping, every inch of her skin shockingly bright and cold. She shoves strands of hair out of her face and grins up at Yasha, paddling furiously to get her flash-frozen blood moving again.

“That was stupid.” Yasha’s tone is clearly aiming for careless, but there’s something high-pitched in it. “You had no idea how deep that was.”

“Deep enough!” Beau tells her, and splashes in a circle, her body beginning to adjust to the icy rush, laughing aloud for the joy of it. She strikes out, swimming a short distance upstream, stretching pleasantly, reclaiming the strength and movement of her body.

She turns back to the bank just in time to see Yasha slip into the water.

Yasha, it turns out, swims like a fish. No, like a shark, her long, muscular body cutting through the water with astonishing speed and grace. She catches up with Beau almost immediately, and swims a fast circle around her, making Beau spin to keep up.

“Show-off!” Beau accuses her, and Yasha… Yasha laughs, a clear, delighted sound, and Beau knows right then and there that she would do anything to hear it again.

She dives, suddenly, and pinches Yasha’s leg under the water, and when she surfaces, Yasha is ready to splash her right in the face.

“Oh it is _on_ ,” Beau tells her, spluttering a bit.

By the time they scramble back on to the bank, panting and smiling, to stretch out side by side on the grass, Beau is beginning to feel more like herself than she has since forever, and a bit less like she wants to punch everything in sight.

Yasha stands up after a while, stretches and leans her back against a clear part of the rocky cliff behind them, beads of water still glistening on her skin. Beau gets to her feet too a moment later, pretends to shake a cramp out of her ankle, and joins her, putting herself just near enough for her bare arm to brush against Yasha’s, and she’s sure Yasha shivers at the contact. She’s sure.

Quickly, before she can be less sure, Beau turns to Yasha and finds that Yasha has turned to her, and Beau kisses her, fast and hard and kind of clumsy, half-expecting Yasha to run for her life.

Yasha doesn’t run.

Yasha’s mouth tastes like water.

When Beau breaks contact, it’s Yasha who leans back in and recaptures her mouth, with a low sound in the back of her throat. Beau was wrong - Yasha’s laugh earlier isn’t the best sound she has ever heard - this is. That little noise of _wanting_ that is as familiar to Beau as her own name. Beau _wants_ Yasha with every fibre of her being, here, while she’s here, while they’re both here, now, with her mouth warm against Beau’s, and Beau doesn’t have to save anyone, doesn’t have to make terrible decisions she’ll never forget, doesn’t have to fight. Here and now is just Yasha’s mouth, Yasha’s body, and Beau _wants_.

In one fluid motion, Yasha traps Beau against the rock wall, ducking her head to kiss her, her mouth eager, demanding all of Beau’s attention. Beau gives as good as she gets, nipping at Yasha’s full lower lip, sliding her arms up inside Yasha’s embrace to run her hands down Yasha’s sides and over her back. There’s so much bare skin, smooth and damp under her fingers, pressed firm against her where their bodies meet. Beau wants to touch all of it, all at once, every last bit. To know the feel of all of Yasha under her hands. The wet scraps of clothing between their bodies are too much, but she can’t see a way to stop kissing Yasha long enough to fix that.

Yasha pulls away, and Beau lets out a squeak of indignation, reaching for her again, but Yasha holds her at arm’s length and gods she’s so strong. She looks into Beau’s eyes, with her own eyes wide and dark, and her lips slightly swollen, and fuck, if this isn’t the hottest thing Beau has ever seen.

“Is this ok?” Yasha asks. It takes Beau a moment to process the words.

“Uh, well, yeah. Yes. Very much yes.” She tries to collect herself, which is very hard when all she can think is how much she wants to be kissing Yasha again. “This is very much more than ok with me. Is it, uh, is it ok with you?”

Yasha releases her grip, breathes her “yes” into Beau’s neck, and follows it with a kiss. She untucks and discards Beau’s breastband with a practiced ease that Beau promises herself she’ll ask her about some time, but the thought is driven out of her head as Yasha’s teeth graze her nipple. She hears herself moan and she pulls Yasha in close, Yasha’s thigh landing warm and solid between her legs.

They lose themselves for a while in wandering fingers and mouths and tongues. At some point Yasha’s breastband comes off and Beau finds herself with her hands on Yasha’s tits, and for a moment she can’t believe that this is something she gets to do, but then Yasha’s hands find their way around to her ass and she lifts Beau entirely off her feet, pulling her in closer still, pressing Beau’s back against the rock. Beau wraps her legs around Yasha’s waist and makes a noise that might be a whine, losing sight of everything except how desperate she is for touch, for friction, for _more_. She bucks her hips into Yasha, her hands splayed across Yasha’s back, her nails digging half-moon indents into Yasha’s skin.

Answering her unspoken plea, Yasha puts her down again, moving her hands lower, she hooks her thumbs into Beau’s underwear and slides it over her hips. Beau mourns the loss of Yasha’s body so tight against her, but it’s quickly replaced by Yasha’s fingers, dipping into the heat between her legs.

Yasha’s fingertips finding her clit are a revelation. “Holy shit,” Beau hears herself saying, “holy shit, oh fuck, Yasha!”

Yasha buries her face in Beau’s neck, finding a rhythm to her movements as Beau shifts under her touch, her string of curses dissolving into a wordless moan.

“Beau,” Yasha says against her skin, like a prayer. “Beauregard.” She draws out the end of Beau’s name, rolling it off her tongue. Her fingers are steady and strong and relentless and her voice is... is everything. It tips Beau over the edge and she comes so hard she almost sees stars, with Yasha’s name on her lips. Her legs threaten to give way beneath her, but Yasha holds her up with one arm looped around her waist.

She catches her breath, leaning limp against Yasha, trusting that Yasha won’t let her fall.

“That was _awesome_!” she manages to say, eventually, and feels Yasha snort with laughter.

With a bit of careful manoeuvring they end up on the ground together, Beau half sitting in Yasha’s lap, kissing her lazily. She trails kisses from Yasha’s mouth, over her chin, down her neck, along her collarbone. There’s a scar here, where something sharp once sliced through soft, pale skin and hit the bone underneath. Beau kisses along the line of it and wonders how many scars she’ll find on Yasha with closer examination.

She kisses down between Yasha’s breasts, cupping the weight of one in her hand, and feels Yasha shudder beneath her, hears how her breath catches in her throat. Beau _wants_. She wants to know the feel of Yasha, whether she’ll be slick and wet, wants to know what sounds she’ll make, how she’ll taste when she comes under Beau’s tongue.

And then it falls apart, and not in the really good way Beau was hoping for.

“Oh, hello! I told them you would be having sex, but no one believed me. Well, actually, I think Molly did, you know, but I guess I was right, huh?”

Beau whips her head around and glares at Jester and Nott, who are standing at the edge of the trees a little distance away. Like, really glares at them, the best that she can muster, which, right now, is a lot.

Nott looks like she wants to turn herself inside out with embarrassment. She twists her hands together and stares at the ground, silent. Beau isn’t sure if goblins can blush, but if they can, that’s what Nott is doing right now.

Jester’s grin is almost big enough to split her face in two. “Anyway, we were getting more firewood and we thought we would see how the fishing is going.” She snickers. “Looks like it’s going pretty good.”

“Jester.” Beau reminds herself that Jester is her friend and it’s not good to punch your friends. “Please. Fuck off.” She’s quite proud of having said please.

Nott is gone almost before Beau has finished speaking, and Jester follows after her, telling them to enjoy the sex as she leaves. Beau turns back to Yasha, who hasn’t said a word during the entire encounter. Her face is expressionless, stony, and Beau’s heart does a nervous little flip in her chest.

“Hey, uh, you ok?” Beau isn’t good at this part, she has no idea what she should say. She kind of just wants to kiss Yasha again, but she’s pretty sure that wouldn’t be smart right now. “They don’t have to know,” she says instead. “We could tell them Jester made it up. We’ve just been fishing this whole time.”

“No, um, it’s fine. I mean, unless you want to…” It occurs to Beau that maybe Yasha isn’t very good at this part either.

“No! No, I don’t mind… uh, yeah. Shit. Should we just, uh...”

“Yes, I suppose we should.”

Beau scrambles off Yasha’s lap, grabbing for her discarded clothes. She starts dressing in a hurry, her back to Yasha, and the silence is in danger of becoming even more awkward, so she fills it. “Well, that was great. I mean, you were great. I’m sorry I didn’t get to… I mean, you didn’t get to…” She’s aware that she isn’t actually making things better, so she trails off.

“There’s always next time.”

Beau spins around, one leg in her trousers, fast enough that she almost falls over. “Next time?”

Yasha is mostly dressed already - Beau has no idea how she managed it that quickly - and she’s untangling her hair with her fingers. She looks straight at Beau. “Look, I don’t want to fuck around about this. I like you, I liked what we did today, and I’d like to do it again. Both our lives are really fucking complicated, and I don’t want this to be complicated too. Is that going to work for you?”

There’s a part of Beau that tells her to run. To make a shitty joke, and push it too far, and make Yasha leave her here. She takes a deep breath.

“Yeah.” It comes out quietly, with none of her usual bravado. “Yeah, that works.”

***

Molly gives them a double thumbs-up when they get back to camp, and Yasha smacks him around the head.

They’ve managed to bring back enough fish for everyone to have a decent dinner, with some leftovers for breakfast. No one says anything to them directly, but Jester makes enough innuendos while they eat that, by the end of the meal, even Caleb is laughing. There’s a little less silence, a little less unhappiness than the day before, and maybe tomorrow there will be less still.

Yasha takes first watch that night, and Beau sits up with her.

“You going to leave again?” she asks Yasha, after a while.

“Yes,” Yasha tells her. “Eventually. But not tonight.”

 _Where do you go?_ she wants to ask. _What do you do when you’re gone?_ And the newest addition to the litany:  _Can I go with you?_

She won’t ask. Not now, not today, not here. Beau does understand debts. She understands having no choice. Having to be places and do things and there not being any option not to, no matter what you might want or know or feel. Yasha owes herself to something, and she won’t be free until she doesn’t any more. Beau can respect that, even if she doesn’t like it.

She falls asleep slumped against Yasha’s side, with Yasha’s arm draped over her, warm in the firelight.

***

Beau is alone when she wakes, and for a moment she’s sure Yasha left in the night. She’s not surprised, she tells herself, rolling over and stretching the kinks from her neck, she’s not surprised and and she’s not angry and she’s not disappointed.

But then, there Yasha is, crouched by the fire, turning a couple of fish on a spit, and talking quietly to Molly while he shuffles his cards on the ground next to her.

Jester was right, Beau thinks as the others begin to wake up around her. It is nicer when Yasha is with them, and not just for Beau. They feel more complete, somehow, with her there.

Once they’ve all had something to eat, sitting together in a loose circle on the grass, Yasha pulls some scrolls out of her pack and puts them on the ground in front of her. “I picked up some information while I was travelling. It might help us decide where to go.”

Beau never wanted any of this shit. No politics, no revolutions, nothing riding on her shoulders.

She leans forward anyway, to help figure out what their next mission should be.


End file.
